Do we as a society want to wade into the morass of telling people what kinds of activities they can use energy for?

I mean, yeah, that's just basic civil regulation. Energy generation has massive negative externalities, and preventing waste is a worthy cause. I don't agree that AI must be singled out in that sense, but even it were, I imagine a modest push for efficiency would only help us in the long run.

  If we care about saving a watt-hour, there are lots of places to look. 

Well put, but I think it's important to bring the analysis one level up, and look at emissions. In that paradigm, meat eating and non-essential travel (yes, including vacations to Rome, business meetings, scientific conferences, and other perceived-to-be-unalienable rights) are punching way above their weight class.

For anyone who's curious on specifics re:AI emissions, the recent MIT article is the gold standard in terms of specificity, neutrality, and nuance: https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energ... .

I also did some napkin math here in 2024.12: https://bsky.app/profile/robb.doering.ai/post/3lckwra33vk2t TL;DR: Eating one less burger affords you ~300 chatbot inferences, and avoiding a flight from ATL to SFO affords you ~16,000.